LuckyRobin's Personal Finance Blog

Getting Rid of Massive Debt

About Me

Lucky Robin

I am a 48 year old stay at home mother. I have been married to my wonderful husband for 23 years, though we have been together for 26 years. Our daughter is 21 and our son is 18 and is home-schooled. We live in Washington state's beautiful most NW corner.

After thirteen long years, and nine years intensively working on it, we paid off a massive amount of medical debt, around $100K, and are now free of consumer debt since March of 2016, though we still owe my mother some money.

Archive for January, 2010

I can't believe it's been over a year since I've made an entry here. I used to be so good at this. Well, it's not because I've been piling on more debt. Quite the contrary. When I first started this blog we were $250,000 in debt due to medical bills (which was $150,000 of the total), mortgage, and credit card debt from all the money spent on meals out when I was far too ill to cook (which believe me, really adds up over the course of three years in and out of the hospital).

Where we stand today?

$103,000.00 left of the medical debt
$ 25,254.32 left on the mortgage
$ 70,000.59 credit card debt
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$198,254.91 total debt

$51,745.09 is how much we have paid off since April of 2006. The $103,000 is a no interest loan from my mother. The mortgage is at 5.5% and the credit card debt varies from 12% to 18%.

Because that debt mountain is still so very high and because things have changed dramatically in the last year, we have decided to sell our house. My father went into a nursing home earlier this year and my mother, who is 70, simply can't get on like she used to. My oldest sister had been living with her for a couple of years but had finally gotten back on her feet again and moved out earlier this year. This left my mom alone in a seven bedroom house, and since she had fallen twice this year, I did not like that.

So we all sat down and talked about it and we decided we'd move in with my mother and take over making sure everything got taken care of. So, we'll be paying all the day to day living expenses for everyone (electric, gas, water/sewer, garbage, groceries, phone, etc.), but no rent. We'll be saving on gas because we won't be driving 50 miles every time we need to do something in town. And I'll have peace of mind.

When we sell the house, we're going to wipe out our debt with it. It may be a while though, because we have to repair a lot things and repaint and replace the carpets. And the market isn't great, but we're not looking to make some big profit off it. Right now I'd be happy to walk away with enough to pay off the mortgage and all the credit card debt, even though it's worth more than that. I just want a clean slate, and the only person I owe anything to to be Mom.

So that's where I sit at the moment. I'd really like to get back into the habit of blogging again, because that saving mindset comes into my thought process much more rapidly when writing about it is a priority to me. Besides that my goal for the month of February is going to be to start building up my Emergency Fund/Safety Net once again. It's been sorely neglected.